Friday, February 17, 2012

And amid a flurry of text messages, we're back to "FERAL."

A pack of pit bulls just killed a neighbor's cow. The ones I saw were very like pit bulls.

My dog-o-meter dropped from "feral" to "stray" last week, and now it has returned to "feral." Not to mention "shoot on sight."

For the dog-lovers among us, sorry about that. The local puppy mill is still the most likely culprit. Years of legal maneuvering having accomplished nothing, now we're getting property damage and cattle mutilations from runaways.

Bother - I'd just stopped carrying a rifle everywhere I went, and now this.

UPDATE: Well, one bit of uncertainty is put to rest: It's definitely the puppy mill. Maybe now, after years of trying to get him to, the guy will finally shut down. Meanwhile the whole neighborhood is running around with rifles. If I had some blaze orange vests for the boys, I think I'd make them wear them now.

Oh, and according to the eye witness there were NINE DOGS in the pack that got the cow. I'm not only carrying the rifle, I'm carrying the bag'o'mags.

11 comments:

Anonymous said...

Time to implement rule 7.62.


Buck.

LJH said...

Any chance you could get away with shooting the goddamned puppymillers? That would solve the real problem. I'll even drive down and help you dig the graves.(She said, only semi-facetiously.)

MamaLiberty said...

Damn! Any kind of dog that will attack a cow is no "stray." Feral indeed. Just get the job done. And I'd have to second LJH's observation. Just be careful.

Rachel Ailin said...

Actually, I recently had a conversation with a lady who had to put down her family's golden retriever and her three puppies because they were maiming the cows. They were domestic as they get, but in a pack situation unsupervised, they reverted to their predatory instincts.

Though unfortunately, even if they're not feral, if they're killing livestock they still get the "Shoot-on-sight" tag. Terrible shame. I love pit bulls.

Anonymous said...

I think I'd be keeping the boys indoors or in Gitmo until the pack is rounded up or shot. I'm not implying that LB looks anything like a cow.

M said...

Worse, it wasn't just a cow from a rancher's herd - it was a neighbor's basically-domestic-pet cow Myrtle.

DonkeyBuster said...

Dogs in packs are nothing but bad news, no matter the breed. I've got pits, I love pits, but a pack of pits... uh-unh, final solution time.

There was a beautiful purebred boxer down the road that was harassing cows, killed a calf, the owner couldn't be bothered to keep it up. That dog is "over the rainbow bridge" now.

Carl-Bear said...

Probably a silly question: Did the cow's owners send the bill to the puppy factory?

And I'm curious: How did y'all confirm it is the puppy mill? Tags? Chips?

Joel said...

Simplicity itself, Carl. The guy who lost the cow called the sheriff. Sheriff and he went to the puppy mill. And there were some of the dogs who killed the cow.

Pretty open and shut. What they plan to do about it, I don't know.

Carl-Bear said...

The perps were there?

There's a lot more wrong than just dumping unmarketable dogs going on there, if the the critters are still living there but have to go out killing livestock.

Anonymous said...

We have a neighbor whose dogs have attacked cattle, especially small calves. The neighbor "loses" those dogs frequently (when he receives complaints or when one of the dogs get shot) but within a short period of time will have a couple more dogs to replace them. Neighbor does nothing to discipline the dogs. They are well fed, friendly to a fault towards people, but they get with one or two other dogs and they go do in a calf or two. They don't eat the calf...they just chew on him, pull him down, snap a leg in two, bite off a tail. Dogs do that sort of thing if they are not disciplined at an early age.

bennie